


Sleep In the Heat

by viktorstardust



Category: LISA (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Nightmares, Not Beta Read, bc its lisa, happy ending sort of, things are still fucked
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22450735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viktorstardust/pseuds/viktorstardust
Summary: Terry dies in every dream he has.
Relationships: Brad Armstrong/Terry Hintz
Comments: 13
Kudos: 58





	Sleep In the Heat

**Author's Note:**

> italics = dream sequences

The nightmares come almost every night, without fail.

They have since he was a boy. Back then, they’d called it “night terrors” and said it was just a part of growing up. So his parents stopped getting up to wake him when they happened. The flailing and thrashing was so violent, he’d wake up on the floor.

He was told they’d just stop. Someday when he was older, they wouldn’t happen anymore and he’d be able to sleep in peace. But those days of peace never came. Especially as more and more things to have nightmares about happened. The screaming and kicking in his sleep stopped, but most nights he’d still wake up in his bed covered in sweat and panting like a dog. His bed was one of the few things Dad never took away, but every night it was his coffin.

After a while, he got used to it. Thought it was normal to close his eyes and be met with whatever horrible images his unconscious mind forced him to lie passively back and watch. 

The nightmares were his life, awake or asleep.

* * *

_He rises from the ground with blood dripping down from the gash over one eye, and in the other there is a pounding feeling like the hammering of nails in his skull._

_The figures obscured by haze aren’t saying real sentences, just words that he can’t understand talking on and on about things he can’t process._

_Terry is face down in the sand. His hair in his eyes and his mouth and his body limp like he’s already dead. He’s stricken somewhere in his body with a pang of animal-like, fight or flight terror, the need to bring Terry close to his body and crawl the both of them to safety like the mindless creatures of dirt and fear that they are._

_He’s too far away. He can’t move anything, or move anything closer to himself. It’s frustrating, to be such a stupid and helpless thing. Caught with his neck in a trap as hunters talk nonsense._

_"...all your belongings...”_

_His things. A few empty bottles and the food he got off the ground since he was too dumb to bring anything with him but a few pills. He didn’t think it would take that long to find her. Pills are all he needs to keep going. He still has them, they roll around in his pocket like brilliant blue marbles._

_”...choose wisely.”_

_His things. He wants his things. His animal mind once possessed with bringing himself and Terry away from harm is seized with the need for his stuff. His pills. They’re so bright and blue that they shine brighter than the white sun or the loud yellow of his friend’s shirt._

_And just like that, they’re taking him away._

_And just like that, he can walk and he can think and he’s sure he chose the wrong thing._

_And he’s surrounded by faces he doesn’t recognize, but they’re sitting around a fire and talking about things like they’re all good friends. But he can’t tell you their names. The dread is a hard rock in his stomach, a tight metal chain around his lungs. It is another thing to feel guilty about. Another life he let slip between his fingers. For what? For what?_

_And before Brad has time to drown in that guilt, Terry is back with a knife to his throat. His hair in his eyes and his mouth and the skin of Brad’s neck under his blade._

_”I loved you.”_

_And Terry’s knife misses when he pulls his arms up for the final stab, an arrow lodged in his arm. The knife stabs the dirt instead and Terry’s body is flat against the earth like it was when the truck hit them._

_He grabs Terry by the neck and his bones twist and snap loud enough to be heard through all of Olathe._

Suddenly, he’s upright, with his eyes wide open and staring into the inky abyss of the night sky, the entire world seemingly reforming around him as if it had never changed at all. The campfire they made is dead, and the loudest sound for miles is his own heavy, labored breathing.

Everyone’s already asleep. 

His hand travels to his own throat in the darkness. He holds his fingers there as if he were checking a corpse for a pulse. It’s a childish habit that sometimes comes back to him, to check and make sure the dream was just a dream. Like asking a parent to check under the bed for monsters, he checks to make sure the blade didn’t touch his neck.

He’s unscathed, but there’s a dryness in his throat when the rest of the dream hits him.

He stands and stumbles over sleeping bodies until he can see who he wants to see. Terry is sleeping soundly and very much alive, curled up under his blanket with his chest rising and falling, gently and evenly. All as it should be in the waking world.

Brad doesn’t return to his spot that night. He sits next to Terry and stares forward at the sky until the sun comes up and they’re almost ready to get back on foot to resume the search for Buddy. The fact that he manages sleep at all when things are so dire is a blessing and a curse.

When Terry wakes up, he’s surprised to see Brad by his side. Brad wonders if he should tell Terry what he saw.

“Hey, man,” His friend says with a smile and a yawn. Unaware of what happened to him in Brad’s broken mind. “Did I sleep too long?” 

Words don’t come. What would he say? That he dreamt he _sold_ the man that’s been glued to his side since the moment they met, that he only woke up when Terry’s neck snapped loud enough to bring him back to reality? 

Why would Terry need to know that, anyway? 

“No. But we’re leaving soon.” It seems like a pitiful response, and he doesn’t understand why he feels both the need and the fear of telling Terry that he saw him die. If anyone can find a way to feel guilty over something that never happened, it’s Brad Armstrong.

Terry kicks his blanket off and gets to his knees, stretching out his arms like he does every time he wakes up. In the short time they’ve known each other, Brad already knows what Terry does when he wakes up every morning. There’s a longing somewhere in his hard old heart that longs to know more about even more mundane things Terry does.

But there’s no time for that. They need to keep moving.

* * *

_It’s too dark to see anything._

_They’re forced to follow one another with hands on each other’s back. He is leading the way. He has always lead the way for them. It’s his journey, after all._

_There’s a dreadful feeling with every step, creeping along the walls of the cave and into their bones, like a million eyes watching them and just as many hands reaching out for them. It is not a safe place to be._

_The walls get smaller and smaller and his gang has less and less room to move. It’s as if the cave is swallowing them whole. It is Hell they are walking through. He can hear his father’s promises of ending up here, in hell, in the mouth of the beast, in the stomach of the father of lies. Hell is where he belongs. He is willingly being consumed and all his friends are coming down with him, a daisy chain of unknowing men following him right down into the place where he has always belonged. They do not deserve it._

_There’s an illuminating light at the end and the others think it means freedom, but all it turns out to be is the milky white eyes of a mutant, deformed beyond belief as they all are._

_Its eyes light up the cave like the headlights on a car, making itself known and filling their own eyes with flesh, nothing but its pulsating flesh, hanging off the walls and the natural points and edges of the cave. He can tell that life is still remaining in this creature from the way its mounds of skin pulse and writhe around them._

_A fight begins; they fight every monster they see just to put it out of its suffering. Every killing is a mercy killing. They do not want to live out here no matter how much they think they do._

_His gang is good and strong like they need to be. Even Terry has learned to pull his own weight, by any means necessary. Someday he wants to put the power of fire into Terry’s hands._

_He’s reluctant to teach his fighting style to anyone anymore. It’s become too personal. He remembers the faces of the kids he put that power into, and it’s too much. Too much to see young faces that once depended on him for guidance. He ruins everything he touches._

_But Terry will be different. Terry is full of life and fire as it is. It won’t be hard for him._

_His eyes, lost in space thinking of his own redemption as a man and a mentor, are brought back down to reality with the sickening sound of teeth tearing flesh from bone._

_The mutant, with its jaw unhinged, has its teeth buried in Terry’s side. Holding him, a limp and glassy-eyed toy in the mouth of the beast._

_She is there, and she is watching, the endless flesh of the monster acting as her noose._

When he wakes up, the campfire is still lit and his fear has been seen. He holds his head in his hands as if shielding himself from the prying gazes of whoever’s awake. A lifetime of sympathetic glances has made him wary to them. Most people stopped feeling sorry for the washed-up drug addict that did all of this to himself, but he could still sometimes feel sad eyes on the back of his neck. If anyone’s sympathy mattered nothing to him, it’s the sympathy from the dogs of men out in this womanless world. 

The very men that seek to steal everything from him, to use her like she’s not even human. He doesn’t want their pity. His head begins to throb with the need for joy.

“You okay, man?”

Brad’s eyes open. He’s staring deep into the fire, but he knows who speaks to him. The guilt is heavy on his shoulders like it was the first time he dreamt of something awful happening to the person that saw nothing wrong with following Brad into the depths of Hell.

The first dream was a fallacy. He had not given Terry up that day, and he never will. But tonight’s dream was realistic and it’s ruining him. Do they know? Do they know by now that Brad is dooming them all?

He motions Terry over to his side of the fire. Loyal as always, Terry comes to his side. He can feel without seeing Terry’s hand almost touch his back, then pull away when he seemingly remembers that Brad doesn’t like to be touched. How hard it must be for Terry to not comfort him. For Terry to not be allowed to show affection because Brad isn’t someone that receives affection well. 

He wishes he could say that he let Terry touch him in this moment. To be able to say that in this moment, he took Terry’s hand and placed it on his own shoulder for him, in a tender gesture that showed that he was okay to be touched, he wasn’t a bomb waiting to go off. 

He can’t say that, because he is. He is nothing more than a volatile amount of pain buried deep inside a man-shaped husk. 

Terry understands. They sit in silence by the crackling fire. Brad occasionally opens his mouth to speak, but no words are the right ones. How does one tell their closest companion that he watches him die in every dream he has? 

His eyes finally move when the fire starts to burn them, locking on Terry’s hands that still seem anxious to comfort and care for something. 

“Do you...” He starts, trailing off to find the right words like he often does. You’d think with how much time he spends being careful with his words that they wouldn’t get him in trouble with the people he loves so often. “...Do you want to learn some moves? For fighting, I mean.” It sounds stupid when he says it, but it’s not a stupid sentiment. Terry needs to learn how to fight better.

And if his friend thinks it’s stupid, it definitely doesn’t show on his big, goofy smile. “Hell yeah, man. I’m still pretty helpless out there.” Terry shyly rubs the back of his neck. 

“You’re not.” 

“Well, help me be better, big guy.”

In the most cautious movement ever, Brad takes Terry’s hand in his own, holding his wrist more than anything. He remembers being a young man with a head full of hair taking a much smaller hand in his and giving him the exact speech he’s about to give Terry. The guilt never dulls, never goes away. But if it helps Terry protect himself, he’ll feel even guiltier if he doesn’t teach him. Armstrong Style has, at this point, been used more for killing than it ever has for self defense. 

Terry will use it right, though. 

Seems like the only person that’s ever used it wrong is Brad himself.

“I’m gonna show you how to use fire.” 

* * *

_It doesn’t feel like a dream when he wakes up. The hard ground beneath him and the bright sky stretching endlessly above him is exactly where he was when he fell asleep. She is still looking down on him. So many of her. So many._

_His body, though, is cold. There was a body in his arms when he last looked up at that endless sky, now there is only him, her, and the sound of the waves crashing down below._

_He rouses himself only to find the note on the ground._

_The words mean nothing, the letters don’t translate into being readable but Brad knows what it says. He’s held this note in his hands before. Walked out of safety for him before. Nothing is safe and nothing is sacred out here. Everything he loves is taken from him, but not anymore. Never again._

_As in most of his dreams, faces are blurry and nothing means anything until the terror begins, when it really becomes clear he is having a nightmare._

_The steep mountains and deep pits he has to clime over and into mean nothing. The nonsensical things he sees along the way mean nothing. She is hanging there in every corner of his eye. She watches, she waits. She knows him. He misses her dearly, even when the sight of her means disaster._

_He makes it down the rope to the place where he feels in his heart Terry must be. The closer he gets, the warmer it gets, until he steps into a field of tall grass and the setting sun, warm on his face like a mother’s touch._

_There’s blood all around him, staining the grass red. Even in his dreams the gore is nothing he can’t handle. He’s seen how men look from the inside. They all look the same._

_He’s stopped wondering who these men used to be. They’re not important enough or good enough for him to waste thoughts on. They’re after the same person anyway. He doesn’t want to know who these men were. The people that are important to him will go down with him or they will go down against him. He is a catastrophe to everyone he knows. And that’s the way it’s always been._

_It is wasting time to look for someone that’s worse off by his side._

_The mutant, the cause of all this carnage hears his footsteps in the grass, and turns to look at him with a face obscured. The sun casts a holy light on him that makes him seem like he is the God of this place, he gave and he took it all away. But at his core, as with the both of them, they are just men that killed all their friends._

_All he has to do is touch it, and the mutant ignites in flames. Its roars of pain numb him, its frantic thrashing dazes him. The sun is so bright and so hot. He is a child watching his father struggle in his chair with the pillow held over his face. He just wants him, it, to die._

_It backs up in its writhing pain and simply falls off the edge of the cliff, dead when it hits the roaring ocean below._

_But he is not done._

_Terry is not there. Not there to run to him, to the false safety of Brad's company, like he always would._

_The gore at his feet is unrecognizable as anything that has ever been human, but..._

_Is that...?_

When he wakes up, there’s too much touching his body. It’s hot and it almost hurts his skin to be so close to something. He’s about to shove it off of him when he realizes that it’s Terry. 

He lets him go. He has to. It doesn’t feel right to hold something after that. But just as soon as he untangles his arms from around Terry’s waist, two hands catch them and bring them back.

“It’s cold,” Terry mumbles, not fully awake. “Don’t go...”

And he doesn’t go.

And it doesn’t feel wrong.

His skin doesn’t itch and just like that, Brad doesn’t want to pull away anymore. He doesn’t want his space and he doesn’t want to be alone. It’s such a childish state of mind that he’s forgotten the feeling entirely. Human kindness and the touch of someone who wanted you to be there. Who _needed_ you to be there, somehow just as much as you needed them. Everyone that needs him slips out of his grasp and burns out far away from him. He deserves it, but it hurts. It’s happened to him so much, but the wound is still fresh. The nightmares he’s been having, the gruesome ways he watches someone that needs him lose all the light in their eyes is just him dreaming of the inevitable.

Yet Terry is still there. And oh, god, how long will he still be there? 

It takes him a moment to realize he’s crying, because he hasn’t cried in years. There were no more tears left for him to shed. Terry can no doubt feel the gentle shaking of his sobbing breaths against his back, so he holds his hand. Terry’s hand is so small. Terry’s life is so small. So small he could go at any time. 

“You okay?”

The words are impossibly gentle. Too gentle to be words spoken at him.

He doesn’t answer. 

“Do you want me to give you some space?”

God, no. God, please, no. 

In lieu of an answer Brad just holds Terry closer to his body. He’s never felt so much comfort in another body.

They’re like that for maybe too long, the rest of the gang will start waking up on their own when the sun hits their sleeping faces. It doesn’t matter. For once, it just doesn’t matter. There’s a pit of hopeless anxiety somewhere in his gut, that what he’s doing just won’t matter. All this death he’s causing is for nothing. He can’t let himself think that, so with a sobbing breath, he starts to speak.

“I’m sorry.”

Terry won’t understand what he’s sorry for.

“Don’t be,” His neck cranes back a little so he can look Brad in the eye as they hold each other. “It’s okay to cry.”

That’s not what Brad’s sorry for.

“...I had a dream you died.”

There it is. Finally out in the open. The guilty secret that isn’t even close to the worst thing about himself. The fact that as soon as he loves somebody, all he can imagine is the way they’ll leave.

Terry smiles a little, and Brad’s heart is so warm he’s sure Terry can feel it. “Did I die in a cool way?”

He’s joking, and it’s oddly enough what Brad needs him to do. To just be Terry.

When Brad goes silent again, Terry covers that up to be more sympathetic. “Sorry...But I’m okay, see?” 

That’s a lie. Terry doesn’t know it’s a lie, but Brad can plainly see every scar his companion has gotten just from being in Brad’s orbit. From the little gash on his forehead after Columbo’s truck hit them, to the couple teeth he’s lost taking blunt force to his face, to his crooked nose, to his split lips, and everything in between. Terry was safer when he was stuck up in the tree Brad found him in.

“You die in every dream I have.”

The concern on Terry’s face only grows in depth. Concern from anyone else simply disgusts him. Terry is the exception to a lot of his personal rules and discomforts. 

He swallows hard around a lump in his throat, and Brad wonders if Terry’s seen himself die in his own dreams. “I won’t die.”

Brad doesn’t have the heart to remind him that everyone dies. 

“I’m stronger now.”

“Yeah.”

“You trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’ll be okay.” Terry believes his own words. Brad can’t say the same. “Trust me, man.” 

Terry’s not the one that Brad doesn’t trust.

“Can I...?” Terry brings his hand up close to Brad’s face. Brad lets him gingerly wipe the tears still stuck on his cheeks with his fingers, delicate and warm and everything that Terry is, is embodied in every movement he makes. In everything he touches. He doesn’t deserve to be touched so kindly. 

The touch lingers long after Terry has fallen back asleep, and long after Brad no longer sees all the ways one man can die when he looks at Terry’s face. 

And the next time he sleeps, he does not dream.

**Author's Note:**

> this felt like it wasn't very good but, let me know what you think! comments are always welcome.
> 
> You probably guessed but the idea behind this is that all the ways terry can die in game are just Brad's very vivid nightmares. Because god knows that when i play the game i reload my save every time terry gets hurt 
> 
> also i think giving terry to columbo should be punishable by law


End file.
